WHAT
SECRETS LIE WITHIN THE HOLY SEE? In January of last year, the Royal Society,
the National Academy of Science of the UK, and the Commonwealth hosted
representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the UN Office
for Outer Space Affairs, during its 350th anniversary celebration. The
event offered some dizzying intellects in the featured discussion, “The
Detection of Extraterrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and
Society.” Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer
Royal, announced that aliens may be “staring us in the face”
in a form humans are unable to recognize. Other speakers used words like
“overwhelming evidence” and “unprecedented proof”
to signify how close we may be to making discovery of intelligent alien
life. Some, like Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology
at Cambridge University, worried that contact with these unknowns might
not be a good thing. “Extra-terrestrials might not only resemble
us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence, and a tendency to exploit
others’ resources,” he said. “And while aliens could
come in peace they are quite as likely to be searching for somewhere to
live, and to help themselves to water, minerals and fuel.”[1]

While
other scientists, astronomers, and physicists agreed with Morris’
concerns (most notably, renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking), some
speakers at the gathering of intellectuals were more optimistic, imagining
ETs someday appearing as man’s saviors or, at a minimum, benevolent
space brothers. When Father José Gabriel Funes in a long interview
with the L’Osservatore Romano newspaper weighed in on the question,
“Are we alone in the Universe?” he said there is a certain
possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, and that such
a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith.” He then added:
“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just
as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ‘sister,’
why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’?
It would still be part of creation.”[2] Such statements by Funes
were the latest in a string of recent comments by Vatican astronomers
confirming the belief that discovery may be made in the near future of
alien life, including intelligent life, and that this encounter would
not unhinge the doctrine of Christ.

In 2005,
another Vatican astronomer, Guy Consolmagno tackled this subject in a
fifty-page booklet, Intelligent Life in the Universe?: Catholic Belief
and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life, in which he similarly
concluded that chances are better than not that mankind is facing a future
discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence. Before that, Monsignor Corrado
Balducci made even bigger news when he said ETs were actually already
interacting with Earth and that some of the Vatican’s leaders were
aware of it.

Still,
perhaps most intriguing was maverick Catholic theologian Father Malachi
Martin who, before his suspicious death in 1999, hinted at something like
imminent extraterrestrial contact more than once. While on Coast to Coast
AM radio in 1997, Art Bell asked
Martin why the Vatican was heavily invested in the study of deep space
at Mt Graham Observatory in southeastern Arizona. As a retired professor
of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Martin was uniquely qualified to
hold, in secret, information pertaining to the Vatican’s Advanced
Technology Telescope (VATT) project at the Mount Graham International
Observatory (MGIO). Martin’s answer ignited a firestorm of interest
among Christian and secular UFOlogists when he said, “Because the
mentality…amongst those who [are] at the…highest levels of
Vatican administration and geopolitics, know…what’s going
on in space, and what’s approaching us, could be of great
import in the next five years, ten years” (emphasis added). Those
cryptic words “what’s approaching us, could be of great import”
was followed in subsequent interviews with discussion of a mysterious
“sign in the sky” that Malachi believed was approaching from
the north. People familiar with Malachi believe he may have been referring
to a near-future arrival of alien intelligence. Yet, if ET life is something
Vatican officials have privately considered for some time, why speak of
it so openly now, in what some perceive as a careful, doctrinal unveiling
over the last few years? Is this a deliberate effort by church officials
to “warm-up” the laity to ET disclosure? Are official church
publications on the subject an attempt to soften the blow before disclosure
arrives, in order to help the faithful retain their orthodoxy in light
of unprecedented forthcoming knowledge?

Writing
for Newsweek on Thursday, May 15, 2008, in the article “The Vatican
and Little Green Men,” Sharon Begley noted that “[this] might
be part of a push to demonstrate the Vatican’s embrace of science…
Interestingly, the Vatican has plans to host a conference in Rome next
spring to mark the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, Charles
Darwin’s seminal work on the theory of evolution. Conference organizers
say it will look beyond entrenched ideological positions—including
misconstrued creationism. The Vatican says it wants to reconsider the
problem of evolution ‘with a broader perspective’ and says
an ‘appropriate consideration is needed more than ever before.’”[3]

The
“appropriate consideration” Begley mentioned may have been
something alluded to by Guy Consolmagno three years earlier in an interview
with the Sunday Herald. That article pointed out how Consolmagno’s
job included reconciling “the wildest reaches of science fiction
with the flint-eyed dogma of the Holy See” and that his latest mental
meander was about “the Jesus Seed,” described as “a
brain-warping theory which speculates that, perhaps, every planet that
harbours intelligent, self-aware life may also have had a Christ walk
across its methane seas, just as Jesus did here on Earth in Galilee. The
salvation of the Betelguesians may have happened simultaneously with the
salvation of the Earthlings.”[4] This sounds like a sanctified version
of panspermia—the idea that life on earth was “seeded”
by something a long time ago such as an asteroid impact—but in this
case, “the seed” was divinely appointed and reconciled to
Christ.

The
curious connection between the Vatican’s spokespersons and the question
of extraterrestrials and salvation was further hinted in the May, 2008
L’Osservatore Romano interview with Father Funes, titled, “The
Extraterrestrial is My Brother.” In Google and blog translations
of the Italian feature, Funes responds to the question of whether extraterrestrials
would need to be redeemed, which he believes should not be assumed. “God
was made man in Jesus to save us,” he says. “If other intelligent
beings exist, it is not said that they would have need of redemption.
They could remain in full friendship with their Creator.”[5]

By “full
friendship” Funes reflected how some Vatican theologians accept
the possibility that an extraterrestrial species may exist that is morally
superior to men—closer to God than we fallen humans are—and
that, as a consequence, they may come here to evangelize us. Father Guy
Consolmagno took up this same line of reasoning when he wrote in his book,
Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist:

So
the question of whether or not one should evangelize is really a moot
point. Any alien we find will learn and change from contact with us, just
as we will learn and change from contact with them. It’s inevitable.
And they’ll be evangelizing us, too.[6]

THE
RABBIT HOLE GOES DEEPER . . .

In a
paper for the Interdisciplinary
Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti
of the Pontifical University in Rome (where the Vatican's deepest theology
is discoursed) explains just how mankind could actually be evangelized
during contact with “spiritual aliens,” as every believer
in God would, he argues, greet an extraterrestrial civilization as an
extraordinary experience and would be inclined to respect the alien and
to recognize the common origin of our different species as originating
from the same Creator. According to Giuseppe, this contact by non-terrestrial
intelligence would then offer new possibilities “of better understanding
the relationship between God and the whole of creation.”[7] Giuseppe
states this would not immediately oblige the Christian “to renounce
his own faith in God simply on the basis of the reception of new, unexpected
information of a religious character from extraterrestrial civilizations,”[8]
but that such a renunciation could come soon after as the new “religious
content” originating from outside the earth is confirmed as reasonable
and credible. “Once the trustworthiness of the information has been
verified” the believer would have to “reconcile such new information
with the truth that he or she already knows and believes on the basis
of the revelation of the One and Triune God, conducting a re-reading [of
the Gospel] inclusive of the new data…”[9] How this “more
complete” ET Gospel might deemphasize or significantly modify our
understanding of salvation through Jesus Christ is unknown, but former
Vatican Observatory vice director, Christopher Corbally, in his article
“What if There Were Other Inhabited Worlds” concludes that
Jesus simply might not remain the only Word of salvation: “I would
try to explore the alien by letting ‘it’ be what it is, without
rushing for a classification category, not even presuming two genders,”
Corbally said, before dropping this bombshell:

While
Christ is the First and the Last Word (the Alpha and the Omega) spoken
to humanity, he is not necessarily the only word spoke to the universe….
For, the Word spoken to us does not seem to exclude an equivalent ‘Word’
spoken to aliens. They, too, could have had their ‘Logos-event’.
Whatever that event might have been, it does not have to be a repeated
death-and-resurrection, if we allow God more imagination than some religious
thinkers seem to have had. For God, as omnipotent, is not restricted to
one form of language, the human.[10]

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That
high-ranking spokespersons for the Vatican have in recent years increasingly
offered such language acknowledging the likelihood of extraterrestrial
intelligence and the dramatic role ET’s introduction to human civilization
could play in regard to altering established creeds about anthropology,
philosophy, religion, and redemption could be beyond consequential in
the near-future.

COMING
UP IN PART 2 -- WHAT THE EVANGELISTS OF ET KNOW THAT YOU DON'T

This
series is based on research led by Thomas Horn and a team of investigators
whose report will be published this September under the working title
God's Ghostbusters.

Over the last decade, he has authored three books,
wrote dozens of published editorials, and had several feature magazine
articles. In addition to past articles
at NewsWithViews.com , his works have been referred to by writers of the
LA Times Syndicate, MSNBC, Christianity Today, Coast to Coast, World Net
Daily, White House Correspondents and dozens of newsmagazines and press
agencies around the globe. Tom's latest book is "The Ahriman Gate," which
fictionalizes the use of biotechnology to resurrect Biblical Nephilim.

Thomas is also a well known radio personality
who has guest-hosted and appeared on dozens of radio and television shows
over the last 30 years, including "The 700 Club" and "Coast to Coast AM."
When looking for a spokesperson to promote their film "Deceived" staring
Louis Gossett Jr. and Judd Nelson, "Cloud 10 Pictures" selected Thomas
as their spokesperson to explain the Christian viewpoint on UFO-related
demonology.